The government of Brazil has enacted legislature to increase the country's blend mandate for biodiesel from 7 to 8% in hopes of boosting both commercial agriculture and biodiesel production within its borders.

Brazil has required a blend of renewable fuel in its diesel supply since 2008, and gradually increased it with the last increase happening late 2015. The Brazilian Congress is planning to have the blend mandate increased to 10% by 2019. Erasmo Batistella, president of the Biodiesel Producers Association of Brazil, hopes the new law will encourage more family farms to produce soya, the main raw material used for the production of biodiesel.

According to Brazil's National Petroleum Agency, 1.9 million cubic meters of biodiesel were produced in the country. In January, 50 producing plants were authorized to operate commercially, with 39 of those plants holding the Brazilian Social Fuel Seal approval.

A representative survey conducted by market survey analysts TNS Infratest on more than 1,000 German residents found that majority of Germans appreciate biofuels as "being environmentally-friendly". The survey also found that "one in four" were skeptical about biofuels, saying that crops should be used for food.

"More than two thirds of Germans approve of biofuels. Policy-makers can rely on this clear support from the general public and use biofuels for road transport to achieve the objectives of the Paris Climate Change Conference," said Elmar Baumann, manager of the German Biofuels Industry Association (VDB).

The representative survey was carried out on behalf of associations from the German biofuel sector including the Union for the Promotion of Oil and Protein Plants (UFOP), the German Biofuels Industry Association (VDB) and the German Association of the Oil Crushing Industry (OVID).

Engineers at Washington University in St. Louis discovered a way to improve production of biofuels and other chemicals by capitalizing on the work ethic of cells.

The team, led by Dr. Fuzhong Zhang, assistant professor of energy, environmental & chemical engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, discovered that genetically identical microbial cells have different work ethics. Only a small fraction of cells worked hard to produce the desired chemicals, while others were content to just eat nutrients intended for working cells.

Zhang's team developed a quality-control tool, PopQC, to keep high-performing cells working while eliminating the lazy cells. The team placed a sensor inside the cells that sense the work each cell was doing. If a cell was working hard, the sensor would trigger a controller to make a protein that allowed the cells to survive and grow. If the cell was not working hard enough, the sensor remained silent, and the lazy cells died from lack of nutrition or were knocked out by antibiotics.

The team applied PopQC to two engineered strains of E. coli: one designed to produce free fatty acid, a precursor for biofuels or other high-volume chemicals; and one designed to produce tyrosine, an amino acid that can be a precursor to pharmaceuticals. PopQC allowed the hard-working cells to dominate in both cultures and led to three-fold enhanced ensemble production of both free fatty acid and tyrosine.

Propane is a major component of liquid petroleum gas (LPG) derived from fossil fuels commonly used in vehicles and cooking. With the concerns on fossil fuel depletion, searching for a renewable source of propane is imperative. Lei Zhang and researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences now report the construction of a novel propane biosynthetic pathway in Escherichia coli.

The team constructed a valine pathway into an E. coli strain BW25113 (DE3) Δ13 through genetic engineering, enabling them to produce isobutyraldehyde, a precursor of propane. These strains then achieved propane synthesis by connecting the engineered valine pathway and cyanobacterial aldehyde-deformylating oxygenase (ADO). After screening several mutants, the team identified two ADO mutants that exhibited high catalytic activity for isobutyraldehyde and had improved propane productivity.

The propane pathway constructed through the engineered valine pathway can produce enough isobutyraldehyde for propane production. These results reveal the potential for developing a microbial manufacturing platform for propane.

Brown algae are promising feedstocks for biofuel production. However, it is difficult for one microorganism to convert all components of brown algae with different oxidoreduction potentials to ethanol. A Chinese Academy of Sciences research team, led by Shi-Qi Ji, reports on a thermophilic bacterium capable of direct utilization of brown algae, Defluviitalea phaphyphila Alg1.

Defluviitalea phaphyphila Alg1 has the ability to simultaneously utilize mannitol, glucose, and alginate to produce ethanol, and high ethanol yields were obtained. Furthermore, D. phaphyphila Alg1 can directly utilize unpretreated kelp powder to produce ethanol. Microscopic observation further demonstrated the deconstruction process of brown algae cell by D. phaphyphila Alg1.

The integrated biomass deconstruction system of D. phaphyphila Alg1, as well as its high ethanol yield, can provide an alternative for brown algae bioconversion.

Synthesis gas, a mixture of CO, H₂, and CO₂, is a promising renewable feedstock for bio-based production of organic chemicals. Production of medium-chain fatty acids can be done via chain elongation using acetate and ethanol, main products of syngas fermentation by acetogens. Therefore, syngas can be indirectly used as a substrate for the chain elongation process.

The team of Martijn Diender from Wageningen University reports the establishment of a synthetic co-culture consisting of Clostridium autoethanogenum and Clostridium kluyveri. Together, these bacteria are able to convert CO and syngas to a mixture of C₄ and C₆ fatty acids and their respective alcohols.

The co-culture is also able to grow using solely CO or syngas as a substrate, and acetate significantly stimulates their production rates. The co-culture produced butyrate and caproate as well as butanol and hexanol. However, pH was found to be a major factor during cultivation, influencing the growth performance of the separate strains and caproate toxicity.

This could be an alternative way to produce medium-chain fatty acids and higher alcohols from carbon monoxide or syngas. The process can also be regarded as an integration of syngas fermentation and chain elongation.